Congress claims space resource rights for Americans to exploit 'new frontier'
Source: The Guardian
Asteroid platinum and the briny water on Mars may soon be available for plunder, Republicans and Democrats have agreed, advancing a bill that would grant “space resource rights” and could challenge an international treaty on outer space.
The US Senate passed the Space Act of 2015 this week, sending its revisions of the bill back to the House for an expected approval, after which it would land on the president’s desk. The bill has a slew of provisions to encourage commercial companies that want to explore space and exploit its resources, granting “asteroid resource” and “space resource” rights to US citizens who managed to acquire the resource themselves.
The lawmakers defined “space resource” as “an abiotic resource in situ in outer space” that would include water and minerals but not life.
Space law is a new frontier for the lawmakers and lawyers planted on Earth, and although the commercial spaceflight sector has grown enormously in the past decade – including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic – the prospects of space mining have remained unclear.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/13/congress-claims-space-resource-rights-for-americans-to-exploit-new-frontier
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claim space domain, why don't you get this house or planet in order first
We are seeing first hand how this planet is dying because of the plunder and the track record caused by the human species and its record speaks for its self
Honk----------------for a political revolution Bernie 2016
It is about $20,000, and that is low-Earth orbit. If one wants to send that same kilogram to a near-Earth asteroid, we're talking about a whole lotta cash.
Plus, then there's the problem that the US has no vehicle to get us there. Sadly, the Saturn V (the only one with the capability) died with the Apollo program. The Space Shuttle never got beyond low-Earth orbit, and was a stretch to get to the Hubble Space Telescope, which it thankfully did multiple times, the last time with an emergency rescue backup shuttle on the launch pad. Yup! Space is a dangerous place.
Nothing need ever 'come back to earth' - the moon colony could use the metals to build their own space fleet.
and we shouldn't be looking to live ON the moon, but IN the moon
Moon Base Possible through Lava Tubes
Scientists and theorists had come up with many ideas to open up a functional base on the moon but the issue of radiation outweighs the possibilities. Scientists have recently discovered lava tubes where a base could be safely constructed. In volcanic tubes are now considered to be safe and ideal sites for settling in.
Scientists are accessing the situation and are trying to figure out that how stable these tubes are, they are studying the features and they have discovered that the tubes which are at least 1 km in size could be ideal for human settlement. This new development has raised a lot of hope in the scientific community who have goals to overcome the challenges posed by the lunar environment.
The moon has a rougher environment that the earth. The moon has no atmosphere, this means that there is no protection from the radiation from the sun, there is no magnetic field and that is the reason why the moon has a higher rate of meteor impacts. The surface of the moon is not habitable because of meteor showers and extreme temperatures, during the course of a lunar day, the temperatures could vary by several 100 degrees.
The lava tubes is ideal place because this area is shielded from these dangers, it is expected that the lunar tunnels are much larger than the tunnel discovered on earth, this is because of the lower gravity factor, cave entrances called skylights are known to be the entrance to these tubes
http://www.mytechbits.com/moon-base-possible-through-lava-tubes/981287/
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oh yeah - and there's water there
NASA Is Studying How to Mine the Moon for Water
There's a lot of water on the moon, and NASA wants to learn how to mine it.
Space agency scientists are developing two separate mission concepts to assess, and learn how to exploit, stores of water ice on the moon and other lunar resources. The projects — called Lunar Flashlight and the ResourceProspector Mission — are notionally targeted to blast off in 2017 and 2018, respectively, and aim to help humanity extend its footprint out into the solar system.
"If you're going to have humans on the moon and you need water for drinking, breathing, rocket fuel, anything you want, it's much, much cheaper to live off the land than it is to bring everything with you," said Lunar Flashlight principal investigator Barbara Cohen, of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
http://www.space.com/27388-nasa-moon-mining-missions-water.html
They work together; they are two sides of the same coin. They are the reason why it costs so much to transport water to the ISS and why they drink their own pee. 
(No worries, from what I understand, the pee water is just fine. Apparently it is the foul smell of the place that one has to get used to.)
That is why it takes a fucking 36 story tall Saturn V rocket to get three dudes to the moon, almost all of it fuel (and oxidizer).
The Earth's gravity well is a rather huge issue. The moon's is easy in comparison. Unfortunately, Mars is a bitch, too little atmosphere and too much mass.
Physics 101, my friend.
